October 6th 2023
HOW TO WRITE AN EFFECTIVE BYOD POLICY
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) presents a difficult landscape filled with opportunity and challenge for today’s businesses. Crafting a robust BYOD policy will help recognise the potential risks and outline strong security measures for keeping problems at bay.
A BYOD policy should define device protocols, acceptable use, security measures, privacy rights and user removal procedures. If you don’t have a policy or want to make updates, explore our complete breakdown of a BYOD policy below.
What Should Be Part of a BYOD Policy?
Policy Scope
Before you go into a detailed BYOD policy, outline the scope of what it will cover. Your scope must include what operating systems and devices you authorise, who will use them and a list of permitted (and unpermitted) apps and software. Establishing the scope ensures your employees know what they are committing to by using their own devices.
Device Protocols
Your employees will be accessing confidential company data, so you must implement software that maintains security measures. Your device protocol highlights the specific software an employee will need to install on their devices to keep all company information secure.
At Lily, we can install Mobile Device Management (MDM) software across all mobile phones to ensure minimal data loss during an emergency. MDM is often used with our managed IT and cyber security solutions to retain safe control.
Acceptable Use Policy
An employee’s device is an easy distraction that leads to inefficient operations. Clarify when, how and where the device can be used during work hours and what is considered unauthorised.
Your acceptable use policy may sanction the use of social media platforms, objectionable websites or the exchange of inappropriate information on your company network.
Privacy Rights
A BYOD policy should clearly outline what data you will collect from an employee’s device and how you will collect it. Define what you consider personal data and what you see as company-owned data.
For personal data, outline the employee's ownership and how all data will be unmonitored to ensure complete privacy. For company data, specify what you will collect, where you will store it and how you will monitor it. Lily’s MDM software will ensure you’ll protect employee privacy whilst keeping your organisation’s data safe.
Security Best Practices
Your BYOD policy should include important security provisions to ensure safe working in and out of the office. State that all employees use strong passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA) across sites and apps with sensitive data.
You should also outline the importance of session timeouts, data encryption, password change intervals and security system updates. These security initiatives won’t just secure your company data, but they will also assist you with a Cyber Essentials certification.
Emergency Protocols
Employees will take their personal devices everywhere, meaning there is an increased risk of theft, damage or loss. Since the devices store company data, state what happens in an emergency, such as remote data wiping.
User Removal
Like your emergency protocols, set out procedures for what will happen to an employee device upon termination or resignation. For these circumstances, outline how these employees must destroy all company data from their devices. This can be done either manually by them or remotely by your IT team.
Ongoing Maintenance
Although a BYOD policy reduces hardware costs, it does not mean you can dismiss maintenance support of the employee’s device. You must specify what IT support you offer and what maintenance they have control over.
Enhance Your BYOD Policy with Lily’s IT Security and MDM Service
Contact the Lily team to see how our complete IT management, cyber security and MDM services can ensure safe BYOD implementation.